HTC’s DG H100 Media Link is handy little gadget that can connect any HDMI-equipped TV to a DLNA-enabled wireless home network, so you can stream audio and video content direct from your phone or PC to the big screen.
HTC DG H100 Media Link Mobile viewing: HTC's DG H100 Media Link
The Media Link is a very neat and sleek …

codecs

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I know the codec situation is abysmal, but I really don't understand these types of comments - if it doesn't suit your needs because of whatever missing feature, then surely it just doesn't suit your needs?

Sonos

J. River Id

I've been looking for an audio-only DLNA network player for some time, to stream audio from our Synology NAS box. Frankly, audio-only DLNA units are rarer than hen's teeth, esp. at the lower end of the market.

The only one I've found so far in the under-£100 bracket that's not an Internet radio, is the J River Id (http://www.jriver.com/press/2011/press61.html), which looks like it's just been released. You'd have to order it from the States ($89, plus $20 shipping and whatever UK Customs sees fit to charge you for the import), and WiFi setup looks fiddly, but it might be what you're looking for.

I think the Revo Mondo Wi-Fi "Internet radio hifi adapter" might do the job too, as apparently it has DLNA capability.

DLNA Renderers

You can use pretty much any internet radio as a standalone audio DLNA renderer. They are normally just listed as uPNP, but DLNA is just a subset of that standard anyway.

I've been using a Roberts Revival iStream and the 2Play application successfully for some time. I can stream all my audio collection from my NAS box, or the phone itself and have it play on the Roberts.

It supports FLAC :-)

Quite a few TVs do this

Of the various TVs I've looked at for RegHardware over the last year or so, quite a few of them work as media renderers too, so if you have a phone like the HTC, or various recent Nokia's (back to the N95), you can do the same thing, without a separate box - though of course the capabilities of many TVs are pretty limited in terms of format support.

I was trying this at the weekend, actually, with a Samsung 652 LCD set that some friends had just bought; sending photos from my E72 worked a treat, but the TV couldn't understand any of the AAC (.m4a) files that I had on the phone.

A separate box needs more.

I agree with the sentiment that any stand alone box needs to be more than just a crude DLNA client. Once you've burdened the couch potato with running a PC server of some sort you might as well go the distance and support things like NFS and SMB and a wider array of formats and codecs.

A device that can grab a MKV off of a CIFS share is actually going to be simpler to deal with.

DLNA is shite

DLNA has ~300 different profiles. You've got to implement 1 of them to be certified DLNA-compliant, but to work with another device both devices have to implement the same profile and in the same manner, or you get the crap just mentioned. For instance, my TV will quite happily accept MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC from a SD card, but for DLNA purposes, it will only accept SD MPEG-2.

If DLNA works, it's quite nice from a technological view point, but it rarely does. PS 3 + Twonky is supposedly a pretty decent combo, and is only £120 more and plays blurays...

Don't get me started...

...on DLNA "not working" - incredibly, our Sony BDP-S370 Blu-ray/network media player doesn't recognise H.264/MP4 (iPod-type) videos over DLNA, which means over 90% of the vids on our home LAN are off-limits for this player.

Even worse: I emailed Sony support over this, and they claimed (a) the DLNA spec doesn't include MP4 as a video format (which I understand is flat-out wrong - how come this HTC player can play them?), and (b) support for it will likely never be added to the BDP-S370 in future.

PS/3 + Twonky isn't exactly portable though!

@Tom 38

Fair enough for your home setup, but I think this DLNA adaptor is going to be of use for people who travel/visit family etc.

Most of my friends have HDMI equipped TVs, but no mechanism for playing digital video on it. With one of these, I can pop round with this in my pocket, hook it up, and play video from my phone. Ditto many hotel rooms.

For this reason, and this reason alone, it's a worthwhile purchase from my perspective.

For that money...

...I'd get a small-footprint PC, drop a Mthy front-end, XBMC or something on to it and plug it into the network. More functionality, less hassle, less confusion.

I don't understand what DLNA is supposed to be about. Just seems like yet another way to do something that has already been solved (e.g. use CIFS, or streaming). And (from posts above) have no idea if it will work until after you have bought all the kit.